Well, no inside scoops for me, just a normal fan's opinion, he does seem to be slightly concerned with his accommodating to Macca, he looked kind of uptight even at the car release.

Yeah he seems very nervous. I guess he's been used to a small cosy team, with a very relaxed approach, and is now part of a team that meticulously organises every second of their day.

I'd imagine he's also had to take on a lot of sponsor work like Lewis and Jenson did, and as I recall even Lewis found it to be too much at times.

I think it was on the first test day MW said how they been working him hard in they gym and sim etc.. And then went on to say how he was a bit shocked by it all. He needs to come out the box with some good results as havin a few bad results could play on his mind and not help him.

So has Lewis had a soft tyre run yet? His stints seem to be longer with more fuel and med tyres.

Quote:

He doesn't seem to have had. He's just set a new personal best by the way, on a new set of the medium tyres again, this time a 1:19.291. The Mercedes is still losing most time in the middle sector however in its hunger for aero grip

Has merc still got overheating issues? I was watching day 3 review on sky last night and noticed a lot of burn marks on the body of the merc near the exhausts. Concern or normal?

It's just the paintwork. If you go to the merc reveal thread we posted some pics. Basically by Australia they will have covered that bit in black stuff anyway. It's just where the hot exhaust is so close to the bodywork that it heats up and the paint starts burning off - the actual carbon fiber bodywork will be fine however. To give you an idea, the carbon fiber around the brakes can hit 2200° F and doesnt melt.

Marc seem to have fixed their reliability issues. 148 laps from Rosberg yesterday and 59 from Hamilton so far today (maybe he's going to try for 150 )

Looks like Ferrari has been having some cooling issues around the motor. They've been taking out pieces of the car for more airflow to and around the motor. But I doubt this has anything to do with actual cooling. Maybe electrical.

Looks like Ferrari has been having some cooling issues around the motor. They've been taking out pieces of the car for more airflow to and around the motor. But I doubt this has anything to do with actual cooling. Maybe electrical.

They even had driver cooling issues. Massa was burning up in the car so they had to open two slots on the side to let air in!

Looks like Ferrari has been having some cooling issues around the motor. They've been taking out pieces of the car for more airflow to and around the motor. But I doubt this has anything to do with actual cooling. Maybe electrical.

They even had driver cooling issues. Massa was burning up in the car so they had to open two slots on the side to let air in!

Looks like Ferrari has been having some cooling issues around the motor. They've been taking out pieces of the car for more airflow to and around the motor. But I doubt this has anything to do with actual cooling. Maybe electrical.

They even had driver cooling issues. Massa was burning up in the car so they had to open two slots on the side to let air in!

It's just the paintwork. If you go to the merc reveal thread we posted some pics. Basically by Australia they will have covered that bit in black stuff anyway. It's just where the hot exhaust is so close to the bodywork that it heats up and the paint starts burning off - the actual carbon fiber bodywork will be fine however. To give you an idea, the carbon fiber around the brakes can hit 2200° F and doesnt melt.

Marc seem to have fixed their reliability issues. 148 laps from Rosberg yesterday and 59 from Hamilton so far today (maybe he's going to try for 150 )

That depends on the Spec of the Lay up. The heat proof stuff takes a different mix up that takes longer to make. Bog standard stuff will bubble up if there is too much heat. .

They have been talking about a 1 second gap between tyres for year, it never happens. The teams work out how to maximise each and it ends up being no more than 0.5 and sometimes odd things happen like the hard being faster when everybody expects the soft to be faster - like Perez at Monza.

Does anyone know what tyres Perez was on for that 10 lap run he just did? I hope it's soft because his times at the end of the run were 4.6 seconds slower than at the start.

No info from Autosport or McLaren.

His next run wasn't quite so bad. Although he started it with a lap roughly 1.2 seconds slower than the previous run, the decline in lap time was about 2.8 seconds after 10 laps. No idea how hard he's actually trying, fuel loads, tyres etc but it's interesting when compared to Vettel's earlier 10 lap run, which saw only a 1.2 second drop in lap time.